Fractura Americana
(Also referred to as “The Way Down South of Dixie Victory”, “The House Divided” and “Bring the Jubilee”) Current Year: 1964 “God save the South, God save the South, Her altars and firesides, God save the South! Now that the war is nigh, now that we arm to die, Chanting our battle cry, ‘Freedom or death!’ Chanting our battle cry, ‘Freedom or death!’” -George Henry Miles, God Save the South, the official anthem of the Confederate States of America The Fractura Americana parallel is a world that in its Current Year is a century after there was total Confederate victory in the American Civil War. The American union was forever sundered as the South achieved independence in what has been called by some “the Second American Revolution”. The Confederacy broke off from the Union and further broke itself up into individual states and commonwealths of those states, operating collectively but still independent and free of the encroaching federal control that sparked the secession. Now 100 years later, in an era of rapidly advancing technology, corporate espionage and the looming threat of Communist expansionism, the house that was divided against itself still stands. To Arms! To Arms for Dixie! In 1856, Tennessee-born explorer and mercenary William Walker lead a successful private military conquest of Nicaragua with an army of only 74 men. Unlike in our universe, in the Fractura Americana parallel he is not deposed by a coalition of Central American armies in 1857, fleeing the country and then returning to try and take back the territory, only to be executed after being captured in 1860. Instead, funded by British and American investors that see a potential future in a US trading presence in Latin America, Walker’s investments were is maintained and a truce is brokered with the neighboring territories. With the start of the American Civil War in April of 1861 with the attack on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln orders a complete naval blockade of all major Southern ports under a proposal by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott in order to prevent the flow of trade for secessionist forces, just as in our timeline. However, the presence of a secessionist-aligned nation-state in South America severely complicates this goal in this Universe. Walker’s hold on Nicaragua provides a stable and indispensably valuable way to bypass the Unionist blockade, providing Confederate troops with a steady flow of food, munitions and other supplies that dwindled during the conflict in our universe. Winfield Scott’s so-called “Anaconda Plan” is a complete failure. Southern cotton is exchanged for British rifles and French canons and black powder via the Nicaragua route, drawing European powers further into the conflict and laying the groundwork for future diplomacy. As the American Civil War progresses, the familiar stream of Unionist victories are slowly reversed in this Universe compared to the timeline of our own as the momentum of the Confederate military is recovered as it reestablishes routes of resupply. This comes to a climax in July of 1863 when General Robert E. Lee leads Confederate forces to total victory over George Meade and the Army of the Potomac in the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere; The Battle of Gettysburg. With the success of Pickett’s Charge, the lines of the Union forces are broken and the structure of their deployment collapses, leading Confederate troops to being able to rout them and force them into retreat before the end of July 3rd, 1863. This victory opens a route for Lee’s invasion of the Northern territory states, ultimately resulting in Confederate capture of the city of Philadelphia on July 27th of that year. We Bring the Jubilee Faced with an irreversible tide of Confederate advancement and the possibility of future aid from Britain and other European powers on the side of the secessionists, US President Abraham Lincoln officially recognizes the independence of the Southern territories with the Treaty of Reading (written, signed in and named for Reading, Pennsylvania) on August 7th, 1863, concluding the war nearly two years earlier than occurred in our Universe (with the total casualties consequently also about 250,000 to 300,000 fewer) and ending it with total Confederate victory. “The War of Southern Independence”, as it comes to be known, results in the birth of the Confederate States of America, a loose confederacy that despite not existing under an overarching federal government do not balkanize into a fully independent network but instead remain diplomatically connected, as overseen by an acting President and congress, and functioning as an interrelated collective where each member-state remains autonomous to a level where states’ rights can veto the declarations of the collective governing body. The nation is divided along the Mason-Dixon Line (with the Confederacy containing Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona as well as all of the states south of that group, as well as the bottom third of what we recognize as the landmass of California) as a new territory is born. Richmond, Virginia, remains the capital of the CSA and the First White House of the Confederacy (often referred to as “The Gray House”, in reference to the color of Confederate uniforms) in Court End remains the seat of the Confederacy’s executive branch. Fireworks erupt at night in Richmond and many other Southern cities after the signing of the Treaty of Redding, and August 7th becomes celebrated in the CSA as “Southern Independence Day”. Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that “you could hear a choir of farmers, soldiers and their wives singing God Save the South every night for a week following the victory as word of the Treaty spread like a brushfire, the only interruption the crackle of fireworks in the skies overhead, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in our nation’s history since the Revolutionary War”. The Aftermath For The Confederacy – Forging a New National Identity Jefferson Davis remains as the President of the CSA until 1867 when his six year term ends. In the presidential election of that year, Robert E. Lee wins in a landslide victory over the opposing candidate, Patrick Ronayne Cleburne (another general from the War of Southern Independence), becoming the second acting President in the history of the Confederacy. In contrast with the incised and geographically reduced United States, the Confederate States undergo a post-war economic boom in the years following the war. The CSA becomes a full-fledged member on the world-stage rapidly, possessing its own unique culture divergent from that of the USA, but still distinctly American. It develops its own currency (President Robert E. Lee gracing the $1 bill as well as the 5 cent coin, President Jefferson Davis on the $10 bill and the 1 cent coin, General J.E.B. Stewart on the dime, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on the quarter, William Walker on the $20 bill and the 50 cent coin, and American favorites like Thomas Jefferson on the $5 bill, Benjamin Franklinon the $50 bill and George Washington on the $100 bill), its own national anthem (God Save the South by George Henry Miles), its own holidays (August 7th is celebrated every year as Southern Independence Day, while still retaining a celebration of July 4th as a celebration of American Independence as a whole. The period between July 4th and August 7th comes to be known as “Patriot’s Month” in the CSA, and comes to be marked by a month of intermittent celebration, various patriotic revelry and varying spates of days-off from work and school) and all the other trappings a modern nation, or confederacy, or any power participating in global politics, is expected to have. With the post-war recession gripping the North and the rise of social instability and racially-motivated violence in the Union, the CSA sees an influx of immigrants from the USA in the 1860’s through the 1890’s. In a reversal of “The Great Migration” that was seen in our universe in the 1910’s, Many African Americans in the United States immigrate South across the border between the Twin Americas as several states in the CSA begin combating post-war low populations with extremely tempting offers of land and business opportunities. Several states with lower populations (namely Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi) enact legislation favorable to immigrants from the USA (including government-subsidized reduced-cost land purchases, low taxation on housing and businesses and “guaranteed non-discriminatory hiring practices”) in an attempt to increase their population of stable, able-bodied, family-raising, tax-paying workers and potential military servicemen. Mississippi famously and controversially votes in 1872 to allow free black male property-owners to vote in state-elections. The Aftermath For The Union – The North Shall Rise Again President Lincoln oversees the first year of a period of “Reconstruction” in the (now greatly geographically reduced) United States of America, his popularity among the American people irreparably damaged (along with the popularity of the Republican Party as a whole, becoming “The Party that lost the War and lost the South” in the public’s conscious). Horatio Seymour takes the White House in the Election of 1864, followed by Thomas A. Hendricks in 1868 and again in 1872, both Democrats and winners by a significant margin of votes. Lincoln retires with Mary Todd intro a life of relative seclusion on an estate in the Indiana forests, remaining there until his death at the age of 75 in 1884. According to Mary Todd, his perceived mistakes and failures during the war haunted him until his death. Ulysses S. Grant retreats into a similar life of seclusion after the war, ultimately falling into alcoholism and dying in 1869. While a minor example of a historical divergence, an interesting note about the United States in this universe is that neither the 1909 issue penny nor the 1929 issue $5 bill features the image of President Lincoln, instead featuring John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, respectively. The Lincoln Memorial is also conspicuously absent from Washington, D.C. In contrast to the post-war boom in the seceded states, the United States remains in a cycle of post-war economic recessions for nearly four decades after the end of the war. Its geographic territory massively reduced and the successful agricultural (and now progressively industrial) economy of the South no longer contributing to international trade or to the tax revenue (and, even worse, competing against their economy), the so-called “Reconstruction Era” of the United States is marked by a slow and difficult economic recovery. The Unions earlier and better-ingrained grasp on industry gradually raises the largely gutted rump state out of recession, but it’s not until nearly 1900 with the Electrical Revolution that the North truly recovers. While racial strife exists in various locations to varying degrees as it did in the history of the United States in our Universe, racial hostilities reach a fever pitch in the post-war USA in this Universe, largely due to the sociological phenomenon of post-war scapegoating of African Americans as a contributing factor to the commencement of the war and the Union’s consequent loss. Several massive race-riots severely damage city infrastructure in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s. In a reversal of “The Great Migration” that was seen in our universe in the 1910’s, Many African American US citizens migrate across the border to the CSA in the last decades of the 1800’s, seeking to take advantage of often overly generous (and sometimes poorly thought-out) state-government programs in CSA states. Freedom or Death! – The Southern Abolitionist Movement Other post-war immigrants to the Confederacy are attracted by the prospect of living in CSA states that still allow slavery after the Union’s implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Many US citizens originally from Africa that came across the Atlantic not as slaves but slave-dealers and entrepreneurs in pursuit of business opportunities, as well as former slaves of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that were now Freed Men, are attracted to the idea of being able to get a competitive leg-up on agriculture in new plots of land purchased cheaply in the Confederate states and expanding Confederate territories in the West and Mexican Gulf via still being allowed the ability to purchase slave-labor. Former slave and black slave-holder Anthony Johnson, a resident of the early Virginia colonial settlements in the 1600’s and the first American to have their slave-ownership legally recognized by an American Court (the 1655 Casor Suit), becomes the emblematic mascot of the Black Confederate Anti-Abolition Movement, formed in 1866. After being elected for a second term in the election of 1874 (the standard presidential term in the CSA being six years as specified in the Confederate Constitution), President Lee proposes controversial but ultimately successful legislation in 1876, namely the CSA’s version of the Emancipation Proclamation. As a Confederacy, however, a decree by a politician cannot be forced on the individual states, and instead must pass democratically in each state territory. With the rapid industrialization that occurred in the South with the post-war economic expansion, the tradition of slavery that was already beginning to degenerate before the outbreak of the war is now even closer to obsolescence. With the lack of necessity, more and more Confederate citizens are beginning to take more of an issue with human trafficking. The issue of slavery rapidly rises to divide nearly every echelon of Confederate society in the last three decades of the 1800’s. Abolitionist and opposing anti-Abolitionist parties rise to divide Christians, blacks, farmers, industrialists, women, politicians and economists, each one having its own party “for” and “against”. But deep-rooted political division is not new to the American people, Union or Confederacy, at this point. Between the combinations of the growing Southern Abolitionist Movement, the obsolescence of slave-labor due to the industrial-boom and several violent and costly slave-revolts that wreak havoc in places including Charleston, Lexington and Athens, the populations of Alabama, Kentucky and New Mexico vote in 1876 to end human trafficking by 1882.The success of Abolitionism in those states galvanizes the movement, and moral outrage spreads with furious evangelicalism (later to happen again with the Temperance Movement in the 1910’s). The Southern Abolition Movement hosts highly influential public events, often funded and hosted by sympathetic churches, where public speakers, former slaves and former slave-holders relate the inhumane things they witnessed or experienced in their involvement with slavery. Some speakers at covert meetings for the movement are fugitive slaves that escaped from slave-states via an interstate Confederate version of the Underground Railroad. The snowballing political movement produces the popular mantra of “All Men Free by the New Century”, a slogan advocating Confederacy-wide emancipation by 1900, frequently seen on Southern Abolitionist posters and pamphlets for more than a decade. As time progresses, the other members of the Confederacy follow suit one after the other until the later remainders, Louisiana, Texas and the Carolinas, agree in 1886 to have the rapidly dwindling population of remaining slaves and indentured servants freed (and compensated) by 1892. Mississippi retains slavery-laws until 1894, largely due to the state’s comparatively low slave-population resulting in lowered pressure and urgency, but ultimately has its voters decide for state-wide abolition to be mandatory by 1897, marking the end and obsolescence of legally-protected slavery in the Americas once and for all. The Divide A relatively bitter border develops between the USA and the CSA along the Mason-Dixon Line after the war. As the United States and the Confederacy remain politically and culturally divided, technological and industrial trends also diverge. Carnegie Steel and many other companies are legally prohibited from doing business with the CSA by the United States government as it attempts to use an embargo on Southern business to keep them from damaging the North’s economy. This both hurts Carnegie Steel’s growth compared to our Universe, and retards the progress of urban growth of the CSA. This is reversed, however, as this prompts Richmond-based Tredegar Iron Works to expand to fill the void, rapidly increasing the company’s wealth and influence. The same thing happens with Standard Oil in the 1890’s as well, prompting premature cultivation and growth in the Texas oil industry. By 1922, the Tredegar Corporation, formerly Tredegar Iron Works, has become the single largest and wealthiest company in the world, surpassing even the USA-based General Motors. The Wright Brothers (originally born in Ohio and Indiana, but moving to Tennessee in 1893 for favorable business opportunities) still make their revolutionary flight in 1903 with the world’s first heavier-than-air powered aircraft, and this developing technology is extremely slow in making it across the USA/CSA border. At the same time Southern entrepreneurs are working to improve powered flight in the century’s first decade, Northern companies instead pursue the improvement of lighter-than-air vehicles, producing a generation of airships and dirigibles that wasn’t really seen in our Universe. This divide continues on into the 20th century, with CSA aviation focusing on faster wing-based aircraft (with biplanes and future models of aircraft often being referred to as “Kitty Hawks”, in reference to the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk Flyer) and USA aviation focusing on slower but higher capacity blimps and zeppelins. The effect of railway connections during the war also has an altered and longer-lasting effect, as the USA and CSA both boast a larger and more connected network of railways than was seen in America in our universe. As technology progresses into the 20th century and aviation technology develops, the railroads do not face the gradual obsolescence seen in our universe. In both the USA and CSA, travel by train, or by the more advanced, much larger and more luxurious “Super-Train” as they are called, is still practical and stylish in the 20th century. From Succession to Superpower In the two decades after the war, both the USA (fueled by the geographical and economic loss of the South seceding) and the CSA (fueled by its comparatively small size and limited economy) become more Category:Altered America Parallels Category:American Civil War Alterations Category:Current Year: 20th Century Category:Current Year: 1960's Category:Current Year: 1964 Category:Articles with Images Category:Parallel Articles Category:Alternate Outcomes to Wars Category:Parallels Without the Lincoln Asassination Category:Alternate Technology Category:Economic Alterations Category:Alternate Nations